DIANE ACKERMAN

A
NATURAL HISTORY OF LOVE

It
drove Ovid to anguise and Stendhal to exquisite suffering. It
may be ignited by a sidelong glance or a good head of hair.
To Plato, it was the yearning for a sundered second self.
To some contemporary scientists, it may be a biochemical
cocktail of oxytocin and phenylethylamine. The subject is
love, and in her latest book, poet and naturalist Diane Ackerman
brings to it all the high-wire erudition and rapturous prose that
made A Natural History of the Senses a national
bestseller.

Ackerman combs through history, literature, biology, and pop
culture in search of "the great intangible." She juxtaposes
Cleopatra with Abelard and Heloise, Freud with Blade
Runner. She explores the allure of adultery, the appeal
of aphrodisiacs (including a Roman concoction made from rotting
fish entrails), and the cult of the kiss. She reveals the
secrets of insatiable lovers like Casanova and Don Juan while
baring the trauma of an entire society that has lost its ability to
love. Enchantingly written, stunningly informed, A
Natural History of Love is the next best thing to love itself,
a book that caresses, arouses, and transports.

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS

"Diane Ackerman and love were made for each other... The book
swoops and swirls... [It is] fascinating... extravagant...
insightful." — Boston Globe

"Wide-ranging... full of charming digressions and eccentric
histories... eclectic, erudite, and full of surprises." — San
Francisco Chronicle

“No
one writes quite like Ackerman. She glides from from the peaks of
poetry to the secretive valleys of science to the plains of
personal musings with ease, apparent pleasure, and a frankly
feminine form of confidence... Here Ackerman marshals all her
perceptive and synthetic abilities to consider love, ‘the great
intangible’... As erudite, sensual, sensitive, and brilliant
as Ackerman is, she is also devilishly funny and quite
mischievous.” —Booklist

“A Natural History of Love is an audaciously brilliant
romp through the world of romantic love. Using an evolutionary
history as her launch pad, Ackerman takes off on a space flight in
which she describes, defines, theorizes, analyzes, analogizes,
explains, philosophizes, embellishes, codifies, classifies,
confesses, compares, contrasts, speculates, hypothesizes, and
generally carries on like a hooligan about amatory love. It’s
a blast!” — Washington Post Book
World

“In
a glorious tumult, Ackerman looks at the siren call of mermaids,
the Indy 500, and the ecstasies of a levitating seventeenth-century
saint. And her exploration of young girls’ love for horses takes
her to Lascaux, where she wonderfully and wonderingly describes the
‘floodtide of horses’ crashing down through our
dreams.” —The New Yorker

“Entertaining and beautifully
written.” — Cosmopolitan

“An
atlas through the mysteries of the human heart.... Ackerman tackles
her subjects with a Sherlock Holmes-ian zeal, employing equal parts
philosophy, mythology, history, science, even erotica, to
shed light on this most noble of human
emotions.” —USA Today

“Love is a chliché. Love is tired. Only Diane Ackerman, author of
A Natural History of Love-- the voluptuous
companion volume to her best-selling A Natural History of
the Senses-- could make it
fresh.” —Los
Angeles Reader

“Her book is a voluptuous valentine to a most exalted
emotion, a lusty ballad to erotic pleasures, and an ode
to romantic attachment.... The sum total of these many parts is a
book that is both absorbing and
fascinating.” — Rochester Democrat &
Chronicle

“When the irresistible subjects of love, lust, sex, courtship and
marriage are left to the brilliant mind of poet Diane Ackerman the
result is a fascinating new book.... a potent brew of biology,
history, psychology, and religion, as she explores the many
variances of love.”—The Sunday Sun

“Studded with accurate, witty versions of all the facts that made
biology class interesting, A Natural History of Love is a
wide-angle vision of love — informing, reminding, and
entertaining... with Ackerman’s dry, intelligent humor and engaged
heart.”—Harper’s Bazaar

“I
love Diane Ackerman. There is something about her engagement with
the world, her enthusiasm for people, animals, and nature that
strikes a responsive chord in even the most cynical
reader.” — The Bookpress

“Continuing her own love affair with life, Ackerman shares with
readers her remarkable gifts of rapture, of erudition, and of
insight to provide a guide to living in our highly perplexing era,
a guide that is both amusing and
inspiring.” — Des Moines Sunday
Register

“By
turns playful, serious, poetic, and scientific, Ackerman has drawn
upon a vast variety of sources to create a compelling compendium of
that great intangible, love.” — L.A.
Daily News

“Ackerman’s language... is so rich as to be practically carnal...
Her swath through love and passion is spectacularly encompassing,
breezily anthropological, and utterly
engrossing.” — The Columbus
Dispatch